Good Luck Building a Women’s Health App Without Women
You're certainly gonna need it
Just got off a weeks-long "partnership discussion" with yet another male-founded women's health startup that:
✅ Positioned themselves as "mission-driven" with mega ambitions
✅ Sought my expertise (13+ years shaping the global menstrual health agenda, igniting Menstrual Hygiene Day, advising UNICEF, J&J, Bayer, etc. )
✅ Asked me to lower my rates "because we are a startup"
✅ Had multiple strategy calls where I provided frameworks, insights & direction
✅ Then told me that €1500 over 3 months - €3.30 per day - was "beyond their budget".
Unbelievable.
Let me be clear: This is a problem of values, not of "budget".
⁉️ Somehow they can't find the cost of a daily coffee to pay a woman who literally built the field they're entering.
But I guarantee you they:
✅ Pay their (male) developers
✅ Pay for AWS hosting
✅ Pay for travel to and dinners for VCs
✅ Maybe they'll even pay themselves a salary
But the woman that they were thinking of bringing on with 13+ years of clear domain expertise around menstrual health?
Nope, not worth €3/day.
Yep, that's right.
You want to know women won't trust your apps?
Why your retention will be abysmal?
Because you're building FOR women without centering women's expertise, labor OR lived experience.
Women are not stupid - they have intuition and can sense authenticity from miles away.
You'll spend €50K on a tech stack but won't budget a pathetic €500/ month (well below my lowest rate!) for a menstrual health strategist.
You'll hire 5 male engineers but balk at paying a female health domain expert.
You'll pitch "closing the women's health gap" to investors while actively perpetuating it by undervaluing the women who can actually help you succeed.
THIS is why women's health apps keep failing.
Every week, a man building a women's health app asks me to:
🧠 "Pick my brain" (for free)
🤓 "Be an advisor" (for equity, but no pay)
🤝 "Collaborate" (aka do unpaid labor while they keep ownership)
💚 "Support the mission" (because women are supposed to work for passion, not pay?)
Meanwhile, your male co-founder, your CTO, your investors - they're all getting paid.
You don't get to build wealth off women's bodies while refusing to compensate women's expertise!
If you’re building in menstrual health, menopause, fertility, or any aspect of women’s hormonal health and you want your product to actually work - to be trusted, used, and loved by women - here’s your playbook:
1. Budget for women’s expertise from Day 1
Not “when funding comes through.” Not “once we’re profitable.” NOW. If you can’t afford €300/month for a domain expert, you’re not ready to build.
2. Hire women—especially women with lived experience in what you’re building
“Inclusivity” isn’t a woman on your cap table. It’s women in decision-making roles with competitive salaries and equity.
3. Stop asking women to work for free or “exposure”
You wouldn’t ask your developer to code for free. Don’t ask your domain expert to strategize for free.
4. Center women’s voices, not your assumptions
Your app isn’t for you. Build WITH the women you claim to serve, not FOR them from a distance.
To the startup that just wasted my time: Good luck building a women’s health app without women. You’ll need it.
To every other man in this space doing the same thing: You’re the problem. You’re why women don’t trust FemTech. You’re why the “women’s health gap” persists. Why do you refuse to invest in the very people who can close it?
If you’re building in menstrual health and you want to do it RIGHT - hire me.
I don’t work for free.
I don’t work for “exposure.”
I don’t work for men who see women’s expertise as optional.
But if you’re serious about building something that actually serves women? If you want menstrual health literacy, clinical accuracy, sociocultural expertise, and 15 years of global ecosystem access?
I’m here. My rates are fair. My expertise is unmatched. And I will help you build something women actually trust and use.!
But only if you prove you value women’s labor by paying for it.
📧 dani@dani-health.com
🔗 Work with me
To the next generation of women and girls: You deserve better than apps built by men who won’t pay women. Demand more. 🩸
P.S. If this post makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself why. Is it because I’m angry? Or is it because you’ve done exactly what I’m calling out?
Rant over. Thanks for listening.
#enoughisenough